The Prison
by wayofthepen
Summary: A former employee of the Outer World Affairs department mulls over his experiences on another world, and offers some advice to a new recruit. Written for the Conduit CYOA of /tg/ fame.


Let me tell you, the drive up is the hardest part.

I know you got the standard briefing. You got lectured on the dangers involved and how to avoid them. They played the videos, showed you some photos and passed around a few artefacts. No, I don't know who had the bright idea of redecorating that wing of Outer World Affairs in all white with black highlights though. They said something like 'psychological preparation for prolonged habitation in an abnormal environment.'

But you still have to actually drive to the gateway and step through. It's a neat little hole that's been punched in space-time up in Canada of all places, and not way up north in the middle of frozen nowhere. It's closer to the border down south, near a small town. There's a Tim Horton's like twenty minutes away.

You'll see the walls first – thirty feet of concrete, not alien marble like most people think. There's a guard house, a gate, then inner walls around a couple of buildings. Mundane stuff…warehouses, barracks and administrative buildings all built with materials from this planet. Again, a lot people think otherwise, but very little of that other world is allowed to come back here, despite the wealthy and stupid who clamor for the right to have wood paneling that might suddenly start birthing critters that look like Slenderman in bondage gear.

After the second gate, it's a dirt road through a nice little forest that has to be swept and checked every now and then so nobody has to wake up to having their limbs torn off. The road ends at a frame of white marble. The last misconception is here - there's no swirly energy thing, no shimmering border or occult symbols. It's just a bunch of blocks that form an empty rectangle and make some people want to have arguments about the difference between post-modernism and art-deco.

And then you step through.

Earth is gone. Now the world is flat and white as far as the eye can see. White squares. White shapes. A world of minimalist sculptures. But maybe over there is a single, lonely tree, black veins in the marble turning into black roots and leading up to a black trunk with black branches and black sacks that you know are holding things that make you want to stay the hell away from it. Looking at the purple cloud-sky really isn't much better, so learn to live with white and black. White is good. Black is bad.

OWA has a research facility on the other side. It's the only habitable building on the planet, a big sprawl of – you guessed it – white marble. There's a little more color in there, people finding any excuse to cover over the white with curtains, carpets, painted signs, stickers, picture frames…you'll be tripping over people distracting themselves from the white by staring at things from home.

The last thing you have to get used to if you're going over is the man himself. The Warden. The skin, the eyes, yeah, just like the pictures, but that's not what people stress over. Thing is, he can read your mind. Everybody knows it. Just pretend he can't and don't talk about it. Ever. That's the rule. Being in the Prison gives people enough reason to go off the deep end.

The Warden? No. Pretty average looking. He's a quiet guy, otherwise. You won't get much more than a few words or a little nod out of him. But I remember the first time I saw him. He was standing on the balcony of the house he'd made for himself, getting breakfast from one of the blanks, a girl with glowing tattoos. Long legs and an ass like you cannot believe. It's enough to make me forget they don't have faces…'till she turns around. She sees me checking her out, and I throw up a little in my mouth when she squeezes up next to him and gives him a lick with a tongue that's way too long, like she's telling me she's already taken.

And all that time…seeing him sit there on the marble, with the trees growing outta the walls of his house, the blank he's got hanging off him…I have to think – is he even human anymore? I mean, it's not the way he looks, I've seen weirder. But when I think the pictures I saw of him that were taken here on Earth, he just didn't…fit in like he does when he's in the Prison. Like he doesn't belong here anymore. Like he's a part of that world now.

And I'm thinking about that…And I realize he's been looking at me the whole time.

And he just…gives me a little nod.

I didn't go back when my contract was up. Nobody goes there twice. But if you want me to tell you about the world where everything is on fire, you're gonna have to buy me another drink.

Fuck, make it two.


End file.
